


Sense Memory

by tielan



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen, Hurt John Sheppard, Hurt/Comfort, Team, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-31
Updated: 2011-08-31
Packaged: 2017-10-23 07:25:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/247693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first thing he remembers is hands on his skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sense Memory

**Author's Note:**

> A pinch-hit in the SGA Santa 2009, for obsessed101.

The first thing he remembers is hands on his skin.

Not the usual, grasping kind, but gentle hands, tentative as they touch his cheek. He jerks back in automatic reaction, cringing back in his corner of darkness and oblivion.

But even as he does, something in him wants those fingers to reach for him again.

His wish is answered. Rough-palmed hands ease him over onto his back, and the sudden flare of the overhead light blinds eyes accustomed to darkness. Stark shadows loom above him, painful in the vivacity of their outlines, but the negative image is inscribed on the back of his eyelids - shoulders, throat, head, and the loose swing of thick locks, like stiff snakes around a male Medusa.

"What's wrong with him? What'd they do...?" The speaker breaks off, a sharp-drawn breath of horror, then a stream of words in vicious inflections.

Her fingertips - a _her_ not a _him_ \- press lightly at the side of his throat for a moment, and he can hear her murmur but the words aren't clear. When he opens his eyelids a crack, the tall shadow still looms, but protectively, with no sense of threat - like there's no hurt in the hands running over his chest, testing ribs, brushing bruises - like there's no harm in the voice that fills his ears, the timbre of anger snapping at the air.

"Sheppard? Can you hear us?"

Another murmur comes as his eyes blink, tears welling at the too-bright light that's only blocked by a long, large hand lifted to shadow his eyes. His clammy skin revels in the tender touch of the hands that help him sit up, his ears strain for the voice that pushes through the prison of his mind.

And he knows who he is, where he is, who they are, why they've come.


End file.
